Design in, for, and with Europe

What does it really mean to practice design for policy at the European Level? Over the past few months, this question has been at the heart of our reflections at the EU Policy Lab. We have decided to post a series of blog post on the topic based on the conversation we had with people across the continent and beyond, at conferences, workshops and in the mundane weekly life at the EU Policy Lab. 

Designing policy isn’t about sticking post its. In our work, we visualise, materialise and test ideas early. We learn by doing, experiment, open the horizon framing and constantly iterate. But we’re not doing this in isolation. We've been connecting with a growing community of designers across Europe who are bringing the same mindset into government spaces. This blog is part of a wider conversation, one that started in Brussels, continued in Amsterdam, in Berlin and is now extending across events and spaces. Over recent months, we’ve been asking ourselves: what does a more experimental, user-centred, and iterative approach to policymaking look like in practice? Through hands-on work, collaborative sessions, and a practice reflection, we’re beginning to answer that question.  

Thanks to an invitation to reflect on the practice of design in government from The Service Gazette, we put together “Design in, for, and with Europe” that captures both the promise and the challenges of embedding design in EU policy.  

In this article, we reflect on what it means to design policy in, for, and with Europe. As designers working across 27 countries, 24 official languages, and countless local contexts, our challenge goes beyond improving individual policies: it’s about shaping a shared, collaborative design movement at the European scale.

We explore how design is increasingly embedded in public governance across Member States, from France’s Direction interministérielle de la transformation publique (DITP) to Finland’s Designers in Government.  

We then reflected on our practice and how we integrate design with science and evidence to support more adaptive, user-centred policymaking, through projects like the EU Harmonised Waste Sorting Labelling and speculative initiatives such as Futures Garden. Ultimately, in this article, we ask: how can we design with Europe? Not just within institutions, but alongside communities, across borders, and for future generations. Because designing policy is also about designing the future together.

“As designers for policy, we also balance the immediate “now” demands of policymaking with long-term “future” thinking, bringing the bigger picture perspective, defining priorities, and exploring cross-sector implications beyond political cycles. In this tension between the ‘now and urgent’ and the imagination for tomorrow, we often ask ourselves: How can we go from a moment of inspiration, provocation and future focus to a proactive policy experiment?”

You can read the full article here: Designing in, for, with Europe. Public policy design in an evolving… | by Ottla | The Service Gazette | Jun, 2025 | Medium

This series of blog posts are a space for dialogue, for questions, for co-creation. Whether you're a designer navigating government systems or a policymaker curious about design, we invite you to join us as we explore what designing policy really means, and what it could become.  

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